Turkish delight: North Kitsap’s investigation -- and, the things we carry
“If you’ve been up all night and cried until you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.” C.S. Lewis
The rain pelts my office building, casting darkness too early even for the Pacific Northwest. Hot, hot, summers gave way to hope for long, semi-warm fall days. My flowers wilt in the shadows with me.
At some point I wander in. I don’t want to see anyone. Puppy at my side, I am alive, alone. A friend notes these dragging shoulders. That’s new, I think. I light candles.
Empty space has weight, too, I whisper. Emails fill my inbox of “What we should do and what we shouldn’t” and “What does this or that mean?” Or, “Do we file a lawsuit? Do we appeal to a corrupt school board?” Questions circle above and in between my work hours.
How do we pretend that we believe the lie? I shout to everyone.
Our participation in delusions has long worn off.
Those tempting the system’s oppressive lure are beat back. Wind batters against my aging windows, whistling, howling. Our backs droop, together. He is in the rain, fixing a mailbox. In an office, I care for human trauma. She picks lettuce on a local farm. Her neighbor sweeps a rich lady’s house. A sister translates for elementary students. A father pulls weeds on Bainbridge Island. Some stay home with sick children.
I keep saying the date out loud, “November 22, 2022” because I hope it rides radio airwaves to others who remember, or read the article. Trauma impacts our bodies. The stories we carry turn into stone monuments to supremacy.
Tim O’Brien, writes, “And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”
Lonely and lost in Narnia, Edmund feels seen by the White Witch – her tone, the nourishment of specialness she offers. Edmund eats the Turkish delight she gives him, from an inherent human desire to be seen, heard, known. Her magic numbs. Her power, oppressive. An eternal Winter grips Narnia, silencing all creatures, because the knowing is false. Edmunds’ story is cemented in darkness.
Invitations were extended via text last minute. Worried no one would come, I weathered an internal onslaught of shame. Many Latinx community members had been in pandemic isolation, and the subsequent ways we chose to cope with our own internal worlds of chaos and beauty.
My phone buzzed.
“Donde estas?” she asked.
“I am driving. Where are you at?” I returned.
“Si, estoy aqui, esperando.” She replied.
Waiting? I thought.
I walked to the door. Families I didn’t know followed me. The principal arrived, too. She unlocked the door to the library. I carried bags of snacks and spread them between two round tables. Families entered 15 minutes early and kept coming.
Together we opened the meeting. Time lapsed. Students listened. No devices distracted us. Cascades of stories –marginalization, harm, and discrimination weren’t held by our Western time constraints.
Three hours.
“What about solutions?” We asked.
More stories.
The things we carry are fresh scars, and fresher anger, rage, hurt. Eyes expectant, waiting, anticipating a result.
A system’s offer of complaint forms, student voices, and finally, a group meeting isn’t different than the Turkish delight offered to Edmund by the White Witch. Feeling seen – heard – connected – believed, it was real. The moment, tears, extended length of the meeting all happened. Despite the world shouting “everything is fine,” we believed our voices were heard.
C.S. Lewis writes, “He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish delight—and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food.”
And, it felt so good.
However, the hollow, stone effect of North Kitsap’s magic, prevent movement toward justice. Hearing or witnessing IS extraordinary, and change making. Community could feel minimally validated. The White Witch affirms Edmund’s value, and the stories he tells of his life and feeling alone; however, her offer is a counterfeit care.
Like Edmund, we ate the Turkish delight offered by the system, relying on their forms, processes, hoping thier procedural laws built to oppress us would do something other. Our stories cemented in stones, the scars on our skin, un-dead, and un-done.
We tell and re-tell, undoing the gaslighting of power, systems, and media. Our healing comes from remembering, piecing together the embodied facts, which were enough to be printed, but not investigated. These stone bodies thaw. North Kitsap’s eternal winter allure of power won’t convince our neighbors, friends, or community, because our stories and belonging are bigger than one culture. They extend to every corner of this small county. A county which really wants kids, families, and anyone different to have their places.
“I expect you have seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny steak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now.” (C. S. Lewis)
We are a movement.